The House will consider the reauthorization of the Violence against Women Reauthorization Act (VAWA) today, the same day the Senate voted 78-22 to approve the renewal. In expressing optimism that similar legislation would pass in the House, Senator Leahy pointed to a letter sent from 17 House Republicansto Boehner and Cantor urging passage of the bill in their chamber.

Sandra Fluke also made her feelings known today in her twitter stream:

The 1994 law, which was up for reauthorization last year, provides funding for prevention and recovery services to victims of crimes like domestic violence and rape. However, there are concerns about provisions that contradict federal law to allow tribal courts new powers to try Americans in their courts. From The Washington Post:

Last year the two chambers were unable to find common ground, with the House rejecting the more expansive Senate version, which specifies that services provided under the act would be available to gays and lesbians, immigrants and Native American women. The Senate bill, last year and again this year, also tackles the high rate of domestic violence on tribal lands by giving tribal courts powers to prosecute non-Indians who assault Indian women on reservations.

…The act provides grants to state and local authorities for legal assistance, transitional housing, law enforcement training, stalker databases and domestic violence hotlines.

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) offered an amendment to the yesterday, which was rejected:

Before moving to a final vote, the Senate on Monday rejected an amendment offered by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., which would have stripped out the most controversial part of the bill — the provision giving Indian courts additional powers. The vote against the amendment was 59-31.

“What we’ve done with this solution is to trample on the Bill of Rights of every American who’s not a Native American,” Coburn said, predicting the courts would strike down the provision as unconstitutional.

Supporters of the bill say a 1978 Supreme Court decision that denies Indian tribes the power to try non-Indian citizens makes an exception for proceedings that are acceptable to Congress.

According to the NTUF, the bill would cost $607 million over 5 years, while other estimates say it will cost $659 million.

Tribal courts are just that, tribal. They are in no way representative of the entire citizenry of the city, county or state where the reservations are located.

I’m all for serious steps towards increasing tribal sovereignty, but these types of half measures are putting the cart before the horse. Tribal territories need to be legally, and politically separated from the counties and states in which they currently reside before any sort of true jurisdictional authority can be properly established.

We do NOT need more ways to spend taxpayer money. We do NOT want the money to go to another cover organization for Democrat’s campaigns. I don’t care what the bill is called or how empathetic the feeling – taxpayer money is being used against the people.

Women should own guns. This would help prevent rape and violence against them. A hot line is too late.

You know what I’d like? I’d like all the wise wizards in Washington to figure out a way to stop women from being snatched, assaulted, murdered and then thrown away like so much garbage in a field or some other dumping ground. That’s what I’d like.

so equal but we need special laws for them.
I am sick of all this crap.
enough of these placating laws.
if the fed didn’t take so much money from the states the states could fund whatever they want.
why shift sand from one bucket then shift it back?

Because the Democrat Party players who run the orgs who get the $500 million over the years get a cut and in turn donate a cut to the…. Democrat Party. It’s a variant on the public employee union scam.

I worked in immigration for a while, and with liberal SF lawyers. They generally felt that VAWA (which, I believe is a word for female genitals in Polish) opens the doors for fraud, and they were saying, I kid you not, something along the lines of “well, if these women really want American citizenship that bad, but can deal with abuse”.

VAWA is one of the biggest money trains for liberal groups with alternative plans for the nuclear family.

Other than traffic tickets, do you know any other crimes where police departments and prosecutors have quotas? Been through a divorce? The family law industry cashes in on this stuff too – and divorce attorney’s are totally hip to tossing accusations out there to drum up a contentious custody battle.